The house was a linear, ‘shotgun’ style. Its setting was a wooded back lot, off the street. It had a pond. My friends Roberta and Cal lived there with their animals. Some were orphaned in the wild. Some were domestic animals. Over time, they had a bobcat, a fawn, a buzzard, snakes, a goat, and a pony. They also had geese, guinea hens and chickens.

playing chicken
To enter Roberta’s side door, one had to negotiate a flock of chickens. The rooster was territorial and violent. They kept a golf club propped by the door, so that visitors could repel this hyper bird, as it attacked (not fun, especially when stoned).

goat
Their goat, Patty, was a sweet, funny, sociable creature. She tended to get out of the fence, bop down to the mill, and wander inside. There would be a knock at Roberta’s door.

"Your goat is in the weave room again!" A mill man would say, a look of exasperation on his face. "Please come and get your goat!"

Why Patty the goat was attracted to industry was beyond me. The weave room was a loud, noisy, hot room full of big dangerous machinery that threatened to mangle workers at any time. In an interesting contrast, pretty fluffs of cotton floated lazily through the air; workers breathed cotton fibers.

fawn
From her large enclosure in back, Fawn would be released. Roberta would occasionally let Fawn into the house. Its tiny hooves clopped on the hardwood floors as it ran from one end of the house to the other. Fawn would slip and fall down, long spindly legs flying. What am I doing here? Fawn must have thought. It seems that just yesterday I was in the forest. Then I moved here. Now I am here and I fall down a lot. But I like it.

pony
I didn't see Pony very often. I occasionally heard him. Pony stayed in the large sloped area under the front porch. The house was built upon an incline, and there was lots of space underneath, especially under the front porch and living room.

One Saturday afternoon, after Roberta had gotten off work, we sat around smoking joints. We watched nineteen-fifties science fiction and horror flicks on Creature Feature. We ate and laughed a lot. Afternoon would segue into evening. We’d have visitors. The evenings would eventually become quiet.

"Whiney!" Pony suddenly said one night. "Whiney!" Bump, bump, bump. The noise came from underneath the living room, seemingly from directly underneath my chair. What the freak? Sensitive to noise and to things that went bump in the night, this was almost too much for my system, this alternate universe in which equine life seemingly materialized under one’s chair.

"Oh! That's just Pony! Don't be afraid." Roberta said. Pony was perhaps lonely, or just trying to get some sleep. Perhaps ponies whiney because that's their job. Perhaps we should have let Pony into the house. What'd be the problem with one more animal, after all?

Pony was fat and had a swayback. He couldn’t have had a more loving home. Perhaps he liked staying in the cool dark space under the long skinny house before coming out into the large sunny fenced yard.

Later, Roberta and Cal would move in with her parents, and take some of the menagerie with them. The situation could cause tension in her parent’s fastidious home.

"Roberta, is that buzzard roosting in your closet?" Her mother would ask. Sometimes it was. Mostly it stayed in the upstairs bathroom.

I later had an amusing dream. I dreamt that I walked up the stairs at Roberta’s house. I turned right to go into the bathroom. I opened the door. There was a bear in the bathtub! It was big, mean and loud. I quickly slammed shut the bathroom door. Darned bears in the bathroom! I thought, irritated. Then I woke up.